A Letter to My Students

I don’t say it enough, but I care about you. Each of you. That’s why I’m here. It’s too much work to do it for the money, so there must be something else, and that’s it: I care about you. I want everyone to do well, feel safe, feel valued, be happy, find success.

This room is our space. It’s a safe space. It’s generally calm. Whether the door is literally open or shut, you are welcome here, whether it’s during your scheduled class time or not. I want you to use this space to your advantage. Leave your worries and troubles at the door, and do your best to be fully present. More and more often, that means not being distracted by your phone. (You knew this part was coming.) If you are in the middle of a crisis, it’s unlikely that you will be able to solve it and be present in the class at the same time. If it’s not fatal or contagious, it can wait.

Here’s what happens when you continue to deal with a crisis after you enter our classroom: You appear distracted, anxious, upset. I wonder what’s up. I ask you to put aside your phone--and your emotions, for a time. Giving or getting further information in the midst of this is rarely good. It doesn’t end well. I’ve seen emotions pass across your faces like four seasons in a second. That may surprise you. I observe more than grammar. This is make-or-break time: you will compose yourself, or things will escalate. It won’t end well. Students shut down or leave the room without permission. To do what? Solve the problem? Ask yourself: how many times has that actually happened?

Think about your teachers. What are they dealing with, what are they carrying? Here’s a partial list: concern for aging parents, their own children, their spouses or partners, their own aging bodies and minds, bills, finances, whether or not they are getting sick, their colleagues, that stuff that absolutely needs to get done before the day ends. Somehow we manage. I won’t call it wisdom. It’s simply practice at regulating our own emotions. We taught after 9/11, after any number of national school shootings, after the presidential election, and any number of other polarizing, controversial or upsetting events. It’s guaranteed that some of us are going through a dark night of the soul during block 1 while you are doing a warm-up. Our experience has shown us what we can and cannot control. Adulthood is constant negotiation between those two things. The sooner anyone realizes that, the better equipped he or she is.

Okay, so what? Well, this is the hidden curriculum. The stuff you learn that’s not listed in any syllabus or course overview. It’s in the novels and plays we read, once you decode them and read between the lines. Protagonists face conflicts. It’s how they face them that reveals character. You are writing your story right now. Every moment contains a choice. How will you face them? What later events in your own life are you foreshadowing right now?

Ask yourself: This thing that has me so upset--will it be important in an hour? A day? A year? Ten years? Or will it pass quickly like a spring shower? Think about the verb to weather.

It gets better. Sometimes it gets worse, then it gets better again. Remember that we are together on a mission to make sure that you get what you need, intellectually and otherwise. I care, and I will continue to care as long as I remember you.

Test Anxiety

Fill out your answer sheet

With a number-two pencil.

Make neat black circles.

Do not leave anything blank.

Make no stray marks.

Your exam will be machine scanned.

Raw scores will be recorded.

Fill out your pencil sheet

With answer number two

Circle neat black makes

Do not blank anything. Leave.

Make no marks strays.

Your scan machine will be examined

Recorded scores will be raw

Pencil sheet fill out

#2 answer

Black makes circles neat

Leave. Do not blank.

Stray marks no make

Examine your scan machine

Answer raw records

Answer, out

Black, blank

#2 stray

Scan scan scan

Raw circle

Do not blank

Leave

Leave

Leave

Titles

Teacher, judge, critic, arbiter of pass/fail.

Therapist, counselor, seeker of unknown grail.

Good son, angry kid, loyal friend, outcast.

Late bloomer, number-wearer, second, never last.

Friendly shoulder, prickly loner—confused.

Sound shaper, channeler, painting shades of blue.

Handyman, homeowner: measure once, swear twice.

Hold-out, repeater, stumbler, ignorer of advice.

Long rambler, stream-of-consciousness swimmer.

Light seeker, push on as the day gets dimmer.

Dusk, Late June

Words in speeches echo, get

carried off in impatient air--

dozens of different scripts quietly

running, writing under square caps--

blue and white gowns over colors of souls,

tiger lilies for her, confetti and platitudes,

and the names called hang briefly and

they amble, saunter, swagger, sidle

across the ordinary grass as if it were

a high-wire or runway or pit of coals

as the ice-cream truck's song fades in and out

like childhood itself carried on the air

and the sun sinks slowly and fate smiles today

as dark clouds roll south and thin wispy

fingers overhead reach eastward, stretching

the sky as the sun is pulled down and away

beyond the plains and the purple rays

reach over hundreds of watts of smiles

on the darkening field and some are

lit within, radiating outward before

breaking rank, absorbed by the crowd--

little halos of light grab moments of time

to be seen again as they grow

into what some already know

and fill out shapes and outlines made today

on the island of grass inside the track

and the restless sky is pulling, moving overhead,

urging us all on into a sweet firefly night

as headlights find ways out and home

to never precisely return again.

Teach

Spend a day with us in a crowded, hot room:
Read the roster, have a plan, pick up the book.
Tell me then that the 2:35 bell comes too soon.
They're all here: leaders, dreamers and crooks.

Society's motley progeny arrives at our door.
Country's falling behind, we've heard for years.
Give all, but be prepared when asked for more.
Still, success outweighs failure, to be clear.

I cringe, look away, when I hear kids these days--
we were all there, wandering in some hazy past,
finding our way through an adolescent maze.
Remember time's river, flowing deep and fast.

Do not ever let a shaky grasp limit reach.
Know that those who can, will always teach.

School's Summer

An empty classroom, a floor like a sheet
of ice, reflects summer light from outside,
slight scent of wax lingering. A light wind in
the hall, and the school breathes easy.

The room reaches, wide and empty--
walls and board clean and bare.
Everything's been moved out:
furniture to the hallways, students

scattered like seeds, sprouting into
summer months, under high sun.
Here, real work has been done--
those who came before, turning

twenty-five, twenty-six or more,
somewhere, carrying something
from here—no one enters or exits
a room without taking something

and leaving something else.
Endings and beginnings, stories
crafted in four quarters, two semesters.
Now, no bells, but the slow pulse

of summer's time, measured in
light and darkness, heat and relief--
leading to a chance, in a while,
to pick up the pen, to start again.

The Classroom

Is it my classroom, or theirs?
It's mine, of course, as they see me
whether I wish it or not,
as the man, the one causing
friction against their free-wheeling
self-possession and assurance
that they have this all figured out--
me, this guy, khakis and tie,
some gray at the temples,
who has designs on their freedoms,
via the theater of grades and discipline,
to keep them docile, when all I want
is for them to see these woods,
feel them, the way our protagonist does,
be there, crunching twigs underfoot,
but they are too much here, this
fluorescent prison, with a phone vibrating
in a pocket—a message from
anywhere but here. I try to show them
the seasons of a man—it won't always be
like this—but they will only see it all
in some red-shifted future,
when everything recedes. Now, feet on desks,
studied indifference, and a hardness in
some like a dare. The bell rings,
the sound of a round declared a draw.
Try again tomorrow.

Money for schools

I was talking to my good pal at school today. We have very free-wheeling conversations that can take unexpected and absurd turns. This was one of them.

She said, "You know how transit buses have those big advertisements on the sides?" I said, "Yeah, sure." Then she said, "What about school buses?" Brilliant! Can't you just see some great advertisements on those expansive yellow flanks? Where to start? Budweiser? Marlboro? Okay, maybe not, but we had a good laugh.

Maybe this is the perfect segue of a public institution with good old capitalism. It avoids all those pesky charter-school problems, like uncertified teachers, funneling money away from already-strapped schools, and coming up with clever names like "Brighter and Shinier Children Charter School."

We were really on a roll by then.

"Why stop there?" I asked. "Why not expand it right into the schools? Advertisements on floor tiles, like they have in the supermarket!"

"Yeah! 'Verizon now offering unlimited texting'! she added.

"Why call it the gym?" I offered. "How about the Nike Center?"

The ideas kept coming. The Guidance Department, brought to you by one of those friendly for-profit colleges, or even underwritten by the military. Morning announcements, brought to you by some big pharma company. Kids, please stand for the pledge... and ask your doctor about treating your cell-phone addiction!

Gallows humor, to be sure. Things aren't looking good right now for many schools like ours. We are under scrutiny, as step-salaried employees with--gasp--retirement plans. This, on top of the usual teacher-bashing about short days and summers off. There are problems in public education, but remember that there are problems in society as a whole as well. Many of these end up on schools' doorsteps. The teachers in my school are hard-working and dedicated, which can take us pretty far. But that doesn't mean we're unassailable, clearly. Remember, ours is a profession where budgets are voted on by the general public, and where we answer to a board composed of people who are nearly always from other fields.

Another colleague of mine said recently that all one needs to run a school are teachers and students. True, but not practical. A public school is a small fleet, composed of many ships: faculty, administration, unions, students, parents. These are hulking vessels, and they don't change course easily or quickly--even when they need to.

These things run through my mind often. I'm thankful to be surrounded by articulate and funny people, like my colleague in the mail room today. And, hey, who says there's no creativity in the public schools these days?